At the High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, held every five years since 2001, speakers urged governments to reaffirm their commitment to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and to adopt a new Political Declaration to guide the global response over the next five years.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed spoke of the extraordinary progress made over decades of global cooperation.
“In the 45 years since the first case of AIDS was reported, the world has demonstrated extraordinary resolve and solidarity,” she said, speaking on behalf of Secretary-General António Guterres.
This effort has helped reduce AIDS-related deaths by 70 percent since their peak in 2004 and has brought life-saving antiretroviral treatment to more than 32 million people worldwide.
Progress under pressure
But Ms Mohammed warned that progress remained uneven and fragile. By the end of 2024, 9.2 million people still do not have access to HIV treatment, while 1.3 million people contracted HIV and 630,000 died from AIDS-related causes.
“Funding cuts directly affect the prevention efforts and community systems that are so critical to the response,” she said.
The Under-Secretary-General called for renewed action in five priority areas: expanding access to prevention and treatment, strengthening community leadership, protecting human rights, increasing funding and boosting international cooperation.
“Human rights and equality must continue to guide our response,” she said, warning that stigma, discrimination and shrinking civic space continue to put lives at risk.
The virus continues to spread
Speaking after the opening speech, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima took stock of the current state of the HIV response.
“According to the OECD, development financing fell by 23 percent in 2025, the biggest drop on record,” she said.
She warned that HIV programs in low-income and high-burden countries had been particularly hard hit.
“Our latest UNAIDS data, released last week, showed their fragility,” she said. “HIV testing has fallen by 22 percent in high-prevalence settings, meaning people don’t know their status and the virus continues to spread..”
Risk response
She added that funding for condoms had been cut by more than 90 percent in some areas.
“Prevention is being dismantled at the very time we should be developing innovations such as new long-acting drugs. »
Despite the setbacks, Ms Byanyima insisted that ending AIDS remains achievable.
“Research may yet give us a cure. Ending AIDS is possible; yet we meet at a perilous time,“, she said. “Multilateralism is at its weakest level in a generation while threats are on the verge of wiping out all our gains.”
Listen to our interview with Mandeep Dhaliwal from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) who highlights why the world is at a critical point in the HIV response.
Communities at the center
Representing civil society, Karen Dunaway, global program officer at the International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW), urged delegates to remember that policies debated in conference rooms shape real lives.
“The future of this response will depend on the choices we make in this room,” she said.
She called for protecting bodily autonomy, advancing gender equality, and removing laws and policies that exclude, criminalize, and stigmatize key populations.
Unfinished battle
Reflecting on decades of advocacy, she reminded attendees that progress does not happen automatically.
“Every gain had to be fought for. Every barrier that was removed required someone to question it. Every commitment is a choice,” she said.
“That’s why this moment matters. The people in this room have the power to shape the HIV response that can change this world for the better.”
The two-day meeting is expected to conclude with the adoption of a new political declaration intended to serve as the main global accountability framework for national HIV commitments through 2030.
